Bed-and-Breakfast With Lively Talk

Jackie Bischof joins Lunch Break with a look at a mansion on Brooklyn's Prospect Park West has served as a guesthouse for 25 years. Photo: Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal.

By

Jackie Bischof

Jan. 30, 2013 10:47 p.m. ET

When Liana Paolella opened up her Brooklyn home as a bed-and-breakfast 25 years ago, it was partly out of financial necessity. But the business quickly became a labor of love, as she reveled in the lively discussions that took place around the breakfast table.

Now her four-story mansion, built in 1896, brimming with antiques and occupying a coveted spot across the street from Prospect Park, is on the market for $4.75 million.

A four-story mansion built in 1896 across from Prospect Park was used in recent years as a bed-and-breakfast and now is on the market for $4.75 million. Pictured, one of the bedrooms. Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

Metropolis

In decorating and maintaining the home, Ms. Paolella says her focus was on making guests comfortable and maintaining the home's historical character. "It's beautiful," she says of the house. "Even if I stripped all the furniture out of here, it would still be gorgeous."

Ms. Paolella purchased the home with her then-husband in 1985 for $400,000, according to public records. She renovated it over three months, installing new wiring and plumbing systems, replacing the kitchen and refinishing the floors. She became the sole owner in 1989.

Over the years, she has maintained many details that she believes were original to the house, from the marble bathroom sinks and stained-glass windows to the large pocket doors and carved wooden fretwork. On the parlor floor, she left one door leading downstairs untouched, its darkened wood and markings a testament to the home's history.

Apart from a few midcentury and contemporary pieces, antique fixtures, furniture and paintings fill the home. At the entrance of two rooms, pieces of an ebony wood Chinese "opium bed" hang overhead. The 6,000-square-foot home has eight bedrooms, six bathrooms and six working fireplaces.

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The main staircase seen from the first floor
Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

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The dining room and adjacent spaces.
Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

The home is in the Park Slope Historic District and is one of a row of houses built by architect Charles Peterson in 1896, according to the district's 1973 designation report.

The report praises the simple and "neo-Renaissance" style of the houses. "The whole blockfront shows us that this owner-builder-architect was striving for something better than the average—a solution for the problem of how to handle the row house and of how to lend it both interest and distinction," the report states.

Over her lifetime, Ms. Paolella says she has worked in almost a dozen occupations, including as a legal secretary, interior designer, antique dealer and real-estate broker.

In running the guesthouse, "whatever my talents were that I'd learned along the way I applied to that," she says. "I also baked everything, cooked and served, and I had fabulous people coming."

Intellectual conversations around the breakfast table were the norm. "It was a very political table," she says.

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Parquet on the first floor
Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

The house has hosted artists, scientists and film stars, according to Ms. Paolella, who says she also enjoyed breakfast with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during a visit. Justice Ginsburg stayed at the home in 1994, the court's information office said.

"The highest compliment that Liana's ever received from guests at her table was that they say it was like a European salon," in the tradition of Gertrude Stein and the artists collectives in Paris, says Linda Kaffke, who worked as the guesthouse manager.

Ms. Paolella has decided to sell the house and move to the West Coast mostly for health reasons. The home is listed with Patricia, Kelly and Kristin Neinast of Corcoran Group.

Ms. Paolella has kept several guest books filled with the impressions of the people she has hosted over the years.

"The Victorian spirit of the past and present, that dwell in this inn house, refreshed our souls completely" wrote one guest in 2006. "Joyfully we arrived and regretfully we must depart. Back home there will be no melodic squeak from lovely antique stairs."

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